The real estate market continues to grow, but what do you do if you are on a budget? Are there ways to get quality leads in real estate for free?
Spoiler: There are; actually, tons of ways, especially if you know how to create compelling content and promote it across channels. Growing organic traffic channels may take a while, but once you’re there, you’ll have an inexhaustible source of free leads for real estate.
Free real estate lead generation is acquiring potential clients without paying for them. This can be achieved through various online methods:
Generally speaking, there are only three key ways to acquire leads: generate them using organic traffic channels, paid advertising, or buy leads for real estate from lead generators.
| Free Real Estate Lead Generation | Paid Real Estate Lead Generation |
| Undefined lead quality | Predefined lead quality |
| Unclear scalability | Unlimited scalability |
| Long-term strategy | Immediate results |
| Limited control over lead generation | Full control over lead generation |
| Benefits | Risks |
| Cost-effective measure that reduces your ad expenses | Time-consuming |
| A fairly targeted approach | Inconsistent results and limited control of lead actions |
| Increasing brand awareness | High competition |
| Fostering long-term relationships with potential leads | Delayed results, as you won’t see immediate feedback |
| High chances of achieving measurable results |
Anything can become your starting point. If you are a local expert, collect potential clients in groups and forums. If you are selling commercial property, look for free real estate leads on LinkedIn.
Here are 3 most common groups of free real estate leads for agents:
| Commercial real estate leads | They are mostly looking for office spaces, warehouses, retail stores, and other commercial property. They want the highest possible return on investments (ROI), whether through reselling or providing a comfortable location for their business. |
| Residential real estate leads | These individuals want to buy, sell, or rent residential properties. A random example of this group is divorced real estate leads who want to live separately, so at least one of them will rent or purchase new property. |
| Google real estate leads | These are clients generated through your SEO efforts. This group requires further segmentation, with the initial data being the keywords that generated a particular lead. |
These are just some of the most common examples of potential clients. You can also create custom target audience groups, segmenting your free leads for real estate by location, demographics, or previous interactions.
But one question might still be weighing on your mind: how do I get to know my customers?
We recommend you use lead management software for its speed and accuracy. AI-powered tools will provide precise data-driven insights, helping you identify complex interaction patterns and issue marketable insights into your campaigns.
Here’s how lead management software can unlock free real estate leads for you:
And here’s a similar piece of software for but for inbound phone calls:
With almost 50 thousand real estate agents in the UK, you need something special to set yourself apart. If you want to successfully get free real estate leads for realtors and grow your business, design a unique selling proposition (USP) that demonstrates your competitive advantages and stimulates clients to take the desired action.
Here’s an example of how to generate real estate leads for free with a USP:
| First-Time Homebuyers | “Empowering first-time homebuyers in Manchester since 1962. Over 185,000 successful deals, with an average 7% below the asking price.” |
| Eco-Conscious Homebuyers | “Leading the Green Revolution in central England, with over £382 million sold in eco-friendly properties that cut energy costs by 35% on average.” |
| Residential Renters | “Find your perfect flat in the heart of London. Join the success of 25,000 happy tenants who’ve gotten their rent 15% below the average.” |
Now that you have solid ground to market your services, it’s time to failproof free real estate lead sources. Let’s examine the most common options below.
Every marketer knows content only matters if it ranks well. To achieve this, you should choose the optimal keywords and place them strategically across your media.
Here’s how to get real estate leads for free using SEO step-by-step:
| Step 1 – Do General Semantic Research | SEO research helps you understand your audience and create a long-term content plan. The idea is to reflect the most cost-effective user requests in your articles. |
| Step 2 – Choose the Focus Keyword | Find the most common short and long keywords to build your narrative by using more general keys like “rent flat in London” and long-tail specific keys like “rent 1 bedroom flat in Paddington”.This will help Google understand the semantics and categorise your content correctly. At the same time, don’t overuse keywords. Otherwise, your content may get shadowbanned. |
| Step 3 – Reinforce It with LSI Keywords | LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords – ones correlating with the topic – will help you wrap the content in the right semantics to get real estate leads for free while improving your rankings on Google. |
And now to examples.
The sad part is that small businesses can’t reach the TOP 10 of the “real estate” key search rank. For this keyword, even hitting the TOP 50 will be a success, albeit with a very low chance of drawing any real estate leads. Not too often do you scroll to the 10th page in SERPs, huh?
Here’s a more realistic yet still difficult keyword
This one gives you more focus – “cheap real estate” – while cutting the competition by over 50 times. Important: Ahrefs uses a logarithmic scale for the keyword difficulty, which makes “98” almost a hundred times tougher than “40,” not just two times like the linear logic would suggest.
We recommend you experiment with local long-tail keywords that suit your audience. It can be something like “Rent studio in Mayfair”, “Buy a 3-bedroom townhouse in Liverpool”, etc. Once you establish your reputation and lift your search ranking locally, you can scale up.
Lead magnets are free, valuable resources you offer potential clients in exchange for their contact information. These include guidelines, neighbourhood reports, home valuation tools, checklists, or free consultations. The main aim is to attract and engage the target audience to move them further in the sales funnel.
A well-crafted landing page is crucial for converting website visitors into leads. You can create multiple landings with slightly different target audiences to get as many free leads for real estate as possible.
Be clear and concise, as it increases your chances of getting noticed by potential clients. Use a headline that accurately reflects the page’s content and benefits. Write a short yet catchy landing page and add a call to action at the end. Focus on benefits and how your services will improve the lives of your target audience.
At the end, insert a lead capture form to provide a valuable incentive for contact information. Test different form lengths and placements to see what drives the most conversions.
Social media platforms are powerful tools that can help you get real estate leads, but it will take time and effort. It works similarly to blogging: you target your ideal buyer with compelling content, trying to engage them first and then drive them to conversion.
Here’s more about real estate leads generation lead generation for real estate agents on social media:
| B2B-focused LinkedIn is home to thousands of commercial real estate leads, working professionals, and real estate investor leads. It’s an excellent place for networking opportunities. Leads on LinkedIn are high-income clients who value data-driven content like case studies and research papers. | |
| Facebook real estate leads are a wider audience, including first-time homeowners and renters. You can showcase property by using local groups or Facebook Marketplace. | |
| Lifestyle-driven Instagram leads appreciate high-quality, engaging visual content. One of the tricks is to provide short property tours behind the scenes and client testimonials. Younger generations, such as Gen Z and millennials, appreciate this content. | |
| TikTok | Currently, TikTok is a great platform for lead generation for real estate agents. Older Zoomers and millennials are one of the most active TikTok users in the UK. The content preferences of TikTok users are similar to Instagram, but here, you can safely add some humour since these users like jokes. |
Choose a platform based on your ideal buyer profile, your content creation abilities, and how well your social media strategy fits the bigger picture. For example, you can post your content on YouTube and repost it to LinkedIn while using Twitter to communicate updates and reflect on industry news.
Here’s an example of how to get free real estate leads on Instagram:
The more visually attractive the property, the more you can get from exposing it on Instagram. At the same time, Instagram marketing might not work well with less visually appealing properties and the secondary real estate market.
Here’s an example of generating leads for real estate on TikTok:
@propertywithsimon Check out my latest listing in Plaistow, E13 – this one is a beauty!🏠 #londonproperty #estateagent #londonestateagent #eastham #eastlondon #property ♬ Mr. Saxobeat – Sped Up – Steve Void & DMNDS & Dance Fruits Music
LinkedIn is the only major social platform that has an audience of established professionals. Therefore, you need to establish yourself as a relatable real estate expert.
Complete your profile, add a professional photo, and use niche keywords. For example, if you specialise in flats in the heart of London, key phrases like “cosy suburb house” or “villa in the woods” may not suit you.
Connect with relevant people, such as industry professionals, influencers and potential clients. Participate in groups related to real estate, your local area, or specific niches. Create high-quality posts and add lead magnets to collect users’ contact data.
Here is how you can lure LinkedIn real estate leads to your website:
Source: LinkedIn
Once you gain footing in the game, you might want to start a referral campaign. Good thing, you already know who your customers are.
Here’s how to get free leads for real estate through a referral program:
| Tiered Structure | The more clients you’ve referred, the more you get. It will motivate referrers to invite more referrals. For example, you can get more leads for real estate agents by providing a 1% discount on your services for every new referral until a reasonable maximum. |
| Two-Way Incentives | Provide new real estate leads with a discount or some extra so they have a reason to join and share your contacts with a neighbour or relative. The referral’s reward shouldn’t be the same as the referrer’s — just ensure it’s enough as a motivational factor. That way, you’ll get motivated real estate leads while staying within the budget. |
| Flexible Rewards | Finding real estate leads might not be easy for a referrer, but they will surely be more motivated if they can choose their reward, especially if you don’t provide cash rewards. |
Referral marketing is a great way of generating leads in real estate, with some initial trust inspired by their referrer. Likewise, referral marketing is exceptionally cost-effective for generating free leads for real estate agents.
These 5 real estate agent referral platforms proved their quality by serving for decades. Try to implement them into your real estate lead generation strategy.
| Rightmove | Rightmove is one of the biggest real estate websites in the UK. Users can set their property on selling, renting, and commercial listings. The service allows them to connect directly with realtors, which makes this platform a great place to generate leads as a real estate agent. |
| Zoopla | Zoopla is another real estate and rental marketplace where users can showcase their property and contact agents. It’s a terrific platform to get real estate leads through listings and the “Agent valuation” feature. |
| Savills | Unlike with the two previous websites, average users can’t post on Savills. This restriction makes this platform a great place to get real estate agent leads. |
Most real estate directories, aggregators, and listings work the same way, so you don’t have to do the same work twice. Once you’ve created a brand portfolio for the first time, you can duplicate it on similar platforms with minor adjustments.
Encourage your current clients to share testimonials by providing them with various incentives. Use those reviews to demonstrate your credibility and expertise.
Regularly monitor your online presence on platforms like Google, Zillow, and Yelp. Stay in touch even with your past clients. Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, in a timely manner. Address any potential concerns from negative reviews.
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence on Google. This platform helps you to enhance local SEO to ensure that you appear in local search results when people search for real estate services in your area.
You can provide essential details about your agency, including address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and services offered. Your business will appear on Google Maps, making it easier for potential clients to find your location. Track your performance and gain valuable insights into how people are finding your business.
With emails being the trusted communication method for over 70% of UK customers, it’s vital to use it in your marketing strategy. Batch-and-blast emails are no longer a thing – likely to harm you in the long run – so avoid them at all costs.
Here are 3 stages for getting real estate leads with email communication:
| Segment your email list | Email list segmentation is a crucial aspect of email communication. For example, divorce leads in real estate crave different information than first-time homeowners. The better you segment your audience, the higher the chances your email will resonate with a chosen group. |
| Develop email sequences | To ensure that you’ll get real estate leads without cold calling, create tailored email sequences for every step of the client’s journey, from welcome emails to follow-ups to re-engagement emails.Likewise, you need email automation to send emails based on specific triggers: a welcome email after the registration, a follow-up in three days, a re-engagement email if the user is inactive for a month, and so on. |
| Ensure omnichannel transitions | Every email should contain links to your website, blog, social media platforms, educational materials, and anything else that nurtures, converts, and fits this particular email. |
Every day, 333 billion emails are sent worldwide, so it will take a lot of work to stand out from the crowd and get more real estate leads. The three toughest challenges with commercial emails are personalisation, automation, and performance analysis.
These email marketing priorities might give you a hint on what to focus on:
Source: Statista
Primarily, real estate is an offline industry. So, don’t forget about traditional ways to get new leads. Try offline communications in your marketing strategy, from networking and partnerships with local service providers to direct mail and promo on local offline media.
For instance, if you decide to collaborate with energy efficiency experts, your events could be built around topics like “Does solar energy help to save money?” or “The best budget-friendly ways to lower your bills three times less.”
Closing real estate leads is a big deal, but it’s equally important to analyse them thoroughly as they move down your sales funnel and after they’ve converted or bounced.
Phonexa does both, helping you convert the best real estate leads and learn them better as they interact with you across touchpoints. Be they internal clients or clients transferred to an external advertiser, Phonexa’s eight-in-one marketing software suite will help you maximise your performance with every paid and free real estate lead.
Here’s what we are talking about:
Here are the lead acquisition tools you will get at one price (online price calculator):
| LMS Sync | Lead tracking & distribution |
| Call Logic | Call tracking & distribution |
| E-Delivery | Email & SMS marketing |
| Cloud PBX | Cloud phone system |
| Lynx | Click tracking |
| Opt-Intel | Suppression list management |
| HitMetrix | Use behaviour recording & analytics |
| Books360 | Automated accounting |
Build your plan now, or take a product tour to see the platform in more depth.
One of the best ways to get real estate leads for free is to use your most popular earned media channels while gradually developing the less popular ones. If you want to get leads as a new real estate agent in the commercial division, focus on SEO-optimized blogging and LinkedIn content.
It’s hard to estimate the precise amount of the check, but you can proceed from the fact that the average sale price of a new home in the United Kingdom is around £280,000. The only outliers are the years succeeding a dramatic increase in real estate prices.
Yes, since it saves you time and effort at generating new leads. You can choose what leads you want to buy. At the same time, you don’t need to conduct marketing research and deliver complex campaigns. Sometimes, it can be cheaper to pay for real estate leads that try to generate them for free.
It’s nearly impossible to get exclusive leads for real estate agents for free since there’s no way to know whether potential clients from your blog, search engines, referral program, etc. – are exclusive or not. However, if you need to get exclusive, the best way to get leads in real estate is to buy them from lead agencies, networks, and marketplaces that have the tools to evaluate the exclusivity of the leads they sell.
Leverage your current network and promote yourself on social media. Collaborate with other industry experts and attend as many local events as possible. Use targeted ads and landing pages. Regularly monitor FSBO and FRBO platforms such as Zoopla and OnTheMarket.
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